BOULDER, CO – September 1, 2010 – acrolinx GmbH, the world’s leading provider of Information Quality Management software, and Lingoport, a leading provider of software internationalization tools and software localization and internationalization consulting services, announced today that the two companies will present a live Webinar, Wednesday, September 22^nd, 2010, titled “Writing and Documenting Software for the World with Agile Demands.”

Entering new global markets can be highly rewarding, yet companies are often faced with cutting costs and rapidly deploying high quality products. In order to succeed in today’s challenging business environment, global companies need to embrace more efficient content authoring processes and often look for tools to assist in this process.

Adam Asnes, Lingoport President and CEO, notes, “Software companies frequently realize more than 50% of their sales revenue from markets outside of their home market. Yet the process of engineering and localizing software releases often remains a ‘tail end’ process, with all kinds of clean up, delays and costs.” He continues: “When combined with an agile cycle of rapid releases, companies often face the challenge of keeping code internationalized and well documented.”

Tony Ehrens, VP of Solutions at acrolinx, adds, “By streamlining content development at the beginning of the production lifecycle agile companies can release product documentation in multiple languages for less cost.”

As part of this Webinar, software authoring, internationalization, and globalization experts Kent Taylor of acrolinx, Adam Asnes of Lingoport, and Mike McKenna of Yahoo! will share their views and discuss a variety of best practices, including:

• Decreasing production time for documentation with reuse
• Decreasing translation costs by decreasing the amount of documentation
• Integrating internationalization into the software and content development cycle

This educational online presentation will be held between 10:00am and 11:00am PDT on Wednesday, September 22^nd, 2010. To register for the event, visit http://www.lingoport.com or http://www.acrolinx.com and complete the registration form provided.

This event targets professionals involved in helping their company succeed in international markets, including Software Developers, Engineers, Engineering Managers, Internationalization and Localization Managers, Information Developers, Technical Writers, and Senior Executives responsible for international market share.

About acrolinx (www.acrolinx.com)
acrolinx is the leader in Information Quality Management. Their award-winning linguistic technology, acrolinx IQ™, optimizes content creation to improve efficiency and consistency, accelerate time-to-market for products and decrease localization costs. The world’s smartest companies including Adobe, Cisco, IBM, Siemens, Philips and Caterpillar rely on acrolinx to advance their information development process. See www.acrolinx.com for more information.

About Lingoport (www.lingoport.com)
Lingoport helps globally focused technology companies adapt their software for worldwide markets with expert internationalization and localization consulting and Globalyzer software.
Globalyzer, a market leading software internationalization tool, helps entire enterprises and development teams to effectively internationalize existing and newly developed source code and to prepare their applications for localization.

For more information, please visit http://www.lingoport.com or http://www.globalyzer.com or contact Lingoport at +1 303 444 8020 or info@lingoport.com.

Join us for this Webinar on internationalizing and documenting code in an agile environment. Our special guest will be Mike McKenna, Globalization Manager at Yahoo.

Webinar: “Writing and Documenting Software for the World with Agile Demands”
Date: Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010
Time: 10:00 am – 11:00 am PDT
Where: Your desktop
Registration: Click here to register for this Webinar
Cost: Complimentary
Presenters: Tony Ehrens, VP of Solutions at acrolinx, Mike McKenna, Globalization Manager at Yahoo, and Adam Asnes, CEO and President at Lingoport

As part of this complimentary Webinar, Lingoport President and CEO Adam Asnes will use an open source code base as an example, and evaluate the programmatic elements of the application that are affected by locale requirements. Adam will comb through the code using Globalyzer, Lingoport’s software internationalization tool, to find and externalize internationalization issues.

This interactive one-hour Webinar covers a variety of topics, including:

• A short primer on internationalization and localization basics
• Considering locale and technology requirements
• Analyzing your code base for internationalization issues
  • Identify and externalize embedded strings
  • Locale-sensitive methods/functions and classes
  • Programming patterns
  • Filtering your results
  • Integrating internationalization into your development teams
  • Questions and answers

Join us for a hands-on Webinar featuring practical real world advice based on extensive software globalization experience over a wide breadth of technologies and applications. The information covered in this presentation is aimed toward professionals faced with ongoing internationalization issues, including:

• Technical managers
• Software developers
• Localization engineers and managers
• Internationalization engineers and managers
• Product managers
• And anyone wanting to increase and solidify their internationalization and localization knowledge

cforms contact form by delicious:days

Software companies wanting to expand into global markets often face the challenge of how to best approach and perform internationalization and localization on a large source code base.

It can be a daunting task. Companies risk project delays, sub-par localization results, and miss out on projected revenue from new global target markets if done poorly or without applicable tools and knowledge.

As part of this complimentary Webinar, Lingoport President and CEO Adam Asnes will use an open source code base as an example, and evaluate the programmatic elements of the application that are affected by locale requirements. Asnes will comb through the code using Globalyzer, Lingoport’s software internationalization tool, to find and fix internationalization issues.

The free Webinar will be held between 11:00am and 12:00pm PDT on Tuesday, August 24th, 2010. To register for the event, simply click here or visit http://www.lingoport.com and complete the registration form provided.

Asnes will share his views on what is required to effectively execute an internationalization project and will cover a variety of topics, including: 

• A short primer on internationalization and localization basics
• Considering locale and technology requirements
• Analyzing your code base for internationalization issues
  • Identify and externalize embedded strings
  • Locale-sensitive methods/functions and classes
  • Programming patterns
  • Filtering your results
• Integrating internationalization into your development teams

This online event targets professionals involved in making their companies globally fit, including Technical Managers, Software Developers, Localization Engineers and Managers, Internationalization Engineers and Managers, Product and Project Managers, and anyone wanting to increase and solidify their internationalization and localization knowledge.

About Lingoport
Founded in 2001, Lingoport provides extensive software localization and internationalization consulting services. Lingoport’s Globalyzer software, a market leading software internationalization tool, helps entire enterprises and development teams to effectively internationalize existing and newly developed source code and to prepare their applications for localization.

For more information, please visit http://www.lingoport.com or http://www.globalyzer.com or contact Lingoport at +1 303 444 8020 or info@lingoport.com.

The subject of managing releases over worldwide markets can be a contentious one, with pros and cons on either side of business and development cases. The concept of simship is that if you are releasing your product to worldwide markets, you do it all at once rather than first releasing to your home market and then following with localized versions later. I can’t say that any one approach is right for all organizations, business situations and products, but I can share with you some of the organizational, procedural and business issues that contribute to successful simship global releases.

When a company commits to product releases that serve a worldwide customer base, there’s a long shadow cast on revenue, marketing, sales teams and of course development practices and testing. It’s a challenging logistical undertaking to release software products in multiple markets, requiring well-integrated planning and practices. It’s no wonder simship is viewed alternatively as difficult and impractical to the best thing a company can do. Let’s consider a few of the issues within any organization, starting with the business case.

Internationalization and localization are always in pursuit of a business case, and one exists both for and against simship. That said, the business cases tend to vary based on the global perspective and maturity of the company. The case for simship is strongest among experienced global companies. Their revenues are already global, so delaying releases for localized versions only serves to delay resulting new release revenues. There may be good reason for adding secondary tiers for some local release schedules, but products really should be internationalized, with a clear path for localization and testing within the development path. In practice this isn’t the reality, but there’s quite a bit of agreement and successful data on the business case existing for simship with this class of company.

When companies are relatively new to global markets, they generally tend to put less of an emphasis on simship with new releases, and more of an emphasis on market or business agreements as drivers for their efforts. Perhaps they have a new customer or distributor that must have a localized version. In that case, synchronizing new version development with localization is usually—but not always—an afterthought. This is because the company sees its prime revenues being driven by current product customers. New releases boost sales, renewals and competition, so that connection is strongest where the current customers are. We’d still argue that even under these circumstances, simship should not be pushed aside, as there are gains to be made both for revenues and operations.

Time and revenue projections

Attached to initial time to release and revenue opportunities are quarterly and annual growth numbers. If a product is expected to grow sales by percentages outlined and expected in a marketing plan over months, quarters and years, significant delays in turn make those projections difficult, if not impossible, to meet. Delays add up to real dollars. Now let’s leave the business case behind and look at software development organizations. It is extremely common among both development and localization teams to view localization as a tail-end process. But this is a critically limiting perception if your company is committing itself to serve global customers. Practically, a company shouldn’t build a product with a requirement as major as supporting multiple locales as a tail-end process. Even in cases where legacy code is now being first internationalized for global customers, once that adaptation is complete, from then on localization should be included as an expected part of the development process. That means including requirements for planning, architecture, development implementation, testing and release.

I asked my internationalization colleague Tex Texin to add some words about this. He seconded that as with many other aspects of globalizing applications, development organizations tend to see just the work and delay to releasing their product and not the benefits. And although we work to plan to minimize the pain, there is cost to achieving simship. However, exercising the localized versions often uncovers critical problems in the product core that can require urgent updates, recalls or even the creation of specialized tools to repair customer data in the field. In that context, simship is not only a requirement to be in the international markets and significantly enhance revenue, but is an important part of product testing preventing problems that are costly to repair and damaging to both reputation and future domestic sales.

Tactics

Simship nearly always seems to be the outcome of an internationalization implementation. So, we have some experience working with legacy code that we are internationalizing and then merging with concurrent new development, building localization proactively into the process.

We find and work with the localizable content embedded in the code first. We gain a clear estimate of localization costs by examining those strings, even while they are still embedded in the code using static source analysis. That’s important because it allows the budget and financing mechanisms of an organization more time to accurately fund the localization. Then we systematically provide externalized strings for localization as we go along in the project, rather than waiting until the end. We also perform static analysis on concurrent new feature development so that when we merge legacy and new code, we minimize the risk of expensive surprises. We build functional internationalization and localization test cases and execute both. The internationalization functional testing can be performed by testers regardless of linguistic proficiency. However, because we have been localizing all along, we are also quickly ready for linguistic testing. The combined processes are extremely effective in finding both functional and linguistic defects that may have passed through if performed as an afterthought.

Agile Development: It’s one thing to talk about including localization into your internationalization and development process on large-scale efforts, but what about smaller scale and rapid agile releases? Turns out it’s really no different. I talked to Mike McKenna, globalization manager at Yahoo!, to get some perspective. An extreme example is the release cycles for Flickr, Yahoo!’s photo sharing social network. Flickr sometimes rolls out four to six releases per day, holding the expectation that developers can get immediate access to translations they may need, likely to be small UI changes. Then they pride themselves with directly connecting their developers to users, without intermediaries, to fix issues that may arise from localization or functional changes.

Yahoo! has other software, such as its Open Strategy Platform or Yahoo! Application Platform, which typically have six-week release cycles. In this case, there is a UI freeze before the release sprint so that localization can be integrated into the final release sprint. Developers work with their localization managers and ensure any last-minute tweaks that may become necessary to the UI during the release sprint are well coordinated.

Security: Let’s go back using our timetunnel to the 1990s: Windows 95 was first released in August 1995, its first service pack was released in February 1996 and the second pack in 1998. The localized versions were always lagging behind: Microsoft first released the “Enabled“ version, which was not localized but could run software in your language. A few months later, Microsoft released the localized version. Today, Microsoft and other companies release security patches on a monthly basis if not on a weekly basis. Can you imagine releasing the patch in North America first and only a few months later in the rest of the world? Simship enables the release of security patches and other critical patches on a timely basis to all markets and prevents security glitches.

Internationalization as enabler

The success of localization and the ability to coordinate simship processes are directly dependent upon the quality of a product’s internationalization as well as the development team’s ongoing internationalization practices. Internationalization is the software development enabler, and without it or without a consistent internationalization benchmark, localization and particularly simship get broken. As the saying goes, garbage in, garbage out. Simship takes a little more planning, time, tools and coordination, but it’s hardly an onerous process. Like a lot of things, your organization has to be aware of the benefits and just do it. Then the actual doing is clearly achievable.

About the Author

Adam Asnes is President and CEO at Lingoport and enjoys investigating how globalization technology affects businesses expanding their worldwide reach. Adam is a sought after speaker at industry events and a columnist on globalization technology as it affects businesses expanding their worldwide reach. He often writes articles for localization, internationalization and globalization industry publications and enjoys cycling and Colorado’s Rocky Mountains; he can be reached by clicking here. 

Lingoport’s Internationalization (I18n) and Localization (L10n) Tools and Consulting Solutions

Founded in 2001, Lingoport provides extensive software localization and internationalization consulting services. Lingoport’s Globalyzer software, a market leading software internationalization tool, helps entire enterprises and development teams to effectively internationalize existing and newly developed source code and to prepare their applications for localization. 

For more information on how Lingoport can assist you with all of your internationalization and localization needs, please contact us at info@lingoport.com, call 303.444.8020, or complete the quote request form.

Raulf was previously the Marketing Manager for ENLASO, a Boulder based localization provider, where he managed the company’s marketing initiatives, including social media and branding.

“We are very excited for Chris to join Lingoport; he is a timely and welcome addition to our growing team of internationalization and localization experts. Chris comes to Lingoport with nearly a decade of localization and internationalization experience and was hired on to further strengthening the Lingoport and Globalyzer brands,” states Adam Asnes, founder and CEO of Lingoport.“ His past experience and innovation as Marketing Manager for a leading software localization company made him our number one choice for this position and we look forward to continuing our aggressive growth strategy under his marketing guidance,” Asnes adds.

Raulf, a native of Switzerland, moved to the US in 2000 from Zurich, Switzerland where he worked as a Marketing Specialist for a US-based financial corporation. He earned a Swiss Federal Diploma in Business and Marketing and began his marketing career as a Product Manager for the Swiss Rail Ways, one of Switzerland’s trademark companies.

“Lingoport is a vibrant and energetic leader in the internationalization and localization arena and I am thrilled to be here,” notes Raulf. “Lingoport’s Globalyzer software has become the premier software internationalization tool currently available on the market. Although the product already enjoys a high level of respect in the market place, I’m thrilled to deploy new marketing strategies that will increase awareness to an even broader audience,” he continues.

After implementing several enhancements to Globalyzer, Lingoport recently released version 3.3. Globalyzer helps entire enterprises and development teams to effectively internationalize existing code, aids in reducing the cost for future development, and seamlessly assists the software localization process. Globalyzer key features include monitoring, finding and fixing i18n issues quickly, over a wide variety of programming languages, easily and with no extra proprietary data handling needed.

Additional information about Globalyzer may be obtained by visiting: http://www.lingoport.com/globalyzer

About Lingoport
Founded in 2001, Lingoport provides extensive software localization and internationalization consulting services. Lingoport’s Globalyzer software, a market leading software internationalization tool, helps entire enterprises and development teams to effectively internationalize existing and newly developed source code and to prepare their applications for localization.

For more information, please visit http://www.lingoport.com or http://www.globalyzer.com or contact Lingoport at +1 303 444 8020 or info@lingoport.com.

If you’re considering internationalizing a large and complex software product, there’s one thing you should be prepared for: it’s expensive. There’s just no way around it if you want an application that properly presents, inputs, transforms and reports complex data. I’m talking about applications measured in the hundreds of thousands to millions of lines of code. Seriously, you’re just not going to internationalize a sizeable application that you’ve taken years to develop with money just laying around – unless you have a lot of money laying around, which is pretty rare these days. But before we consider what to do about it, let’s consider the main reasons why you may need to internationalize:

Survival – Your customers are increasingly global, and perhaps they use your product to reach their customers. If you’re not internationalized, you’re limiting their business. The competition and your customers will know this and will eventually eat your company alive. You’d better start finding some money.

A Sale – There is nothing like an important customer to get an initiative moving. If this sale funds the internationalization effort, it makes things easier, though there will be commitment that will extend beyond any one customer. I’ve written before how changing your encoding will change your company. But if this sale doesn’t pay for the effort, corporate initiative will be needed.

You’re company is global – Perhaps your company is a global brand and you’ve quickly developed or acquired a product that isn’t internationalized. In this case, the decision to internationalize is usually simple. You do it because you already have a global reputation, sales and distribution. If you have to justify ROI, somebody is missing the point, there’s a temporary issue or the product isn’t showing promise.

Strategic Initiative – This article isn’t going to be about all the strategic benefits of growing global revenues with products that leverage themselves worldwide, because you know all about that, right? But acting on strategy takes foresight, money, expertise and perseverance.

If you have any of the above situations except budget, this article is especially for you.

I’ll repeat a situation I’ve seen many times. My firm, Lingoport, will be called upon for initial consulting as a company is considering internationalization in reaction to a declared strategic objective to gain business outside a home market. They usually have one or two customers asking for just that, but perhaps there isn’t enough initial interest to finance the necessary development and localization. We go back and perform static analysis on the code using our Globalyzer software, counting the embedded strings, locale-limiting methods/functions/classes and programming patterns that will need attention and refactoring, combined with architectural changes to support locale and changes in processing.

Even with automating tasks for batch efforts like string externalization (after analysis), you still have design, engineering and testing cycles that add up to significant expense. At this point we find out just how strong corporate global resolve sits. And in some cases that resolve is just not quite ready. It’s not a lost cause by any means. In fact, almost always, it’s just a matter of time and resources and most come around in future quarters or fiscal years. But there lies the gap for development managers.

Rarely do developers internationalize software just because it would be cool. You do see that kind of initiative for new features, where a developer might get an idea, work on it during odd or even personal time, and voila, present it to his or her company peers. I have yet to see that happen regarding internationalization (write me if you see otherwise). Still, developers and management often know the need to internationalize is there; ready to become a firm requirement any quarter now. They can go on continuing to develop new features and update current code and not go near internationalization, but actually increasing the scope of the internationalization effort as they grow the code base. Or they can take some simple steps to get ready. To use an expression, “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” Here’s a brief list of what you can do:

• Gather requirements – new locale requirements will go much further than what languages will need to be supported. An architect can be tasked with learning about issues like character encoding and locale frameworks. A product marketing person can learn a bit about use cases and business logic that may alter how the product behaves in new countries. It is all too easy to underestimate the requirements phase. Locale behavior will involve quite a bit more than just string externalization. Start tallying and recording what is found in a centrally available resource, like the company wiki for all to build upon and learn about.
• Prototype a string retrieval method. Learn about resource files and string ID’s and how to make them work. Again, list your results in the company wiki.
• Do a little reading about Unicode and its various encodings, along with appropriate technologies for their use. It’s not enough to commit to using Unicode. You have to gain some understanding of just what that means.
• Consider your database schema and how that might change for locale support along with likely changes to character encoding.
• Consider any third party components or open source you use within your application. Start inquiring about their internationalization support.
• Consider internationalizing a pilot effort or component of your software if your product architecture will permit it. There’s nothing like learning by doing. And if you decide to take a somewhat different approach later, it probably won’t be too difficult to alter what you’ve already done.
• Refine your planning – as you learn more, your planning efforts are likely to get clearer. As plans get clearer, they seem less risky and large. You’ll be in a better position to defend expected costs, resources and schedules.
• Consider application logic. Does your software manage a process that is performed differently around the world?
• Talk with experts – It’s not prudent to try and reinvent the internationalization process. An experience expert, who’s really been through multiple implementations rather than just advising, can get you prepared faster and cheaper than the time it will take using your internal developers. I’ve seen companies create their own proprietary approaches that ultimately get in the way of a successful implementation. Initial consultation shouldn’t be a budget buster. Even so there are free internationalization webinars (we give them and others do too) and excellent conferences available (i.e. Worldware and the Unicode Conferences).
• Start measuring toward your expected outcome – If you establish internationalization development practices and measure benchmarks, you are likely to see improvements to new development without significant cost in time and money. Static analysis tools like Globalyzer create a systematic approach, but if there’s no budget, then a simple and clear inclusion of practices and expectations can go a long way.

If you do at least some of this prior to any funded but highly likely internationalization requirement, you’ll be a tremendous asset to your firm’s globalization efforts. And globalization might just be one of the more significant and company-making undertakings that your firm can embark upon.

BOULDER, CO – March 31, 2010 – Lingoport, a leading provider of software internationalization (i18n) tools and internationalization consulting services that facilitate faster and more accurate software localization, announced today the release of Globalyzer 3.3.

Globalyzer, Lingoport’s I18n tool, monitors and enables software development at the source code level and supports a wide variety of programming languages and database scripts. As part of the 3.3 release, Lingoport created a new Aggregate Summary Report feature, allowing users to easily access the Quick Summary information from each scan in Excel, XML, and CSV file format.

The Globalyzer 3.3 release also includes exciting enhancements to the PseudoJudo function. PseudoJudo now enhances the ability for user to simulate another language for resource files by adding non-English characters to grow each of the software strings by a set percentage. Lingoport’s Globalyzer development team further advanced the Command Line and Ant features, adding support for Batch Scanning from the Command Line or Ant Clients. This is especially important as more Globalyzer customers are looking to automate internationalization static analysis into their regular product development cycle.

The help system of Lingoport’s internationalization tool now includes supplementary information on how to set up Maven to run Globalyzer’s Ant task as well as how to change Globalyzer’s Client’s Data and Log File Directories from its default directory.

“Globalyzer 3.3 continues to support the software localization process and assists entire teams of developers coordinate and perform internationalization development tasks faster through automation and with higher levels of accuracy,” notes Adam Asnes, founder and CEO of Lingoport. He adds, “Globalyzer has become a trusted software internationalization tool, enabling global companies to enter new markets quickly, producing high caliber world-ready products while lowering their worldwide development, translation and support costs.”

To register for a free Globalyzer trial, please visit: http://globalyzer.com/gi/companyRegistration.jsp

Additional information about Globalyzer may be obtained at: http://lingoport.com/globalyzer

About Lingoport
Founded in 2001, Lingoport provides extensive software localization and internationalization consulting services. Lingoport’s Globalyzer software, a market leading software internationalization tool, helps entire enterprises and development teams to effectively internationalize source code and to prepare applications for localization.

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Innovation promises great leaps forward. It offers hopeful and seemingly wondrous shortcuts and economies to everything it touches. It’s a new way, maybe audaciously conceived, and often tricky to execute. It’s also a fundamental pedestal for all we do. And many of us, if we are perseverant and lucky, are actually in the business of being innovative. But innovation always faces initial rejection. It’s just part of the deal.

There’s the promise of dramatic improvement, the skepticism, disappointment and persistence that we find so addicting. So I think it’s worth the time dissecting that process a bit, so we can all benefit a bit more from understanding the inventor, while bringing ourselves forward in ways we can apply to our professional and personal lives.

Great Leaps and Incremental Improvements

I recently read an article that proclaimed a requirement to call something an innovation is a 10x improvement in a process, expense or service. I rather like the idea of putting a numerical value on innovation, as it sets a target standard to be aiming for. I can ask, does my product provide that 10x improvement? That’s a demanding figure! However I don’t think you can discount innovation that isn’t as startling.

Some innovations, think of the printing press and more recently the internet, offer astronomical gains in productivity and information access across society. Going to the library to research has become a quaint activity, with power usurped from librarians everywhere. The internet becomes our personal assistant, advertising vehicle and even a translator. That doesn’t mean incremental improvements aren’t important either. Actually, I think the two are implicitly married, and that one doesn’t persist towards adoption without the other. Broadly applied innovation has an ecosystem of technologies, users and materials. For example, improvements in virus protection probably don’t have a 10x multiplier on internet use, but they do have a cumulative effect on browsing behavior of the people who adapt that protection. Think of the distinction in terms of game changing, and solving serious pitfalls. Both are important to success and adaptation.

Now it also seems that with innovation, you also necessarily encounter a sociological refusal that I’m saying you must overcome to be optimally successful. An example from my mid 90’s past we’d consider small minded now is needing to lobby a particular VP to grant internet access to sales people to help them research customers sites. The establishment fear was that people would spend all day surfing inappropriate sites that would take away from productivity. I can’t imagine an information technology company in that science-focused business applying that same reasoning any longer.

People, particularly from my generation or older, discount social media and blogging, but it’s actually a fairly effective and potent form of circulating news – yes many may not want all the minutia that comes with it, but it can be used quite powerfully and personally when used well.

In a more pedestrian example, I often hear about how code analysis tools won’t work, particularly applied to internationalization, even when there’s apparent proof in project and customer success that they do. I consider it a badge of honor that a leading localization company featured in their blog how internationalization tools are a myth. They all but called out my company’s product by name.  Yet an open mind and some actual research or even a phone call would have shown more of an embrace of the possibility of improvements that actually help the whole industry. People are all too happy to kill off innovation without a serious thought or investigation based on their experiences in the past. In other words, past attempts were unsuccessful before, so we’ll assume nothing could have changed. The blog post even sited products that have been extinct for years as evidence. Small example but this is how reactionary thinking plays out in management efforts that can potentially be damaging in an information industry routed in advancing technologies and development methods.

Where Innovation Comes From

I haven’t noticed a clear path to an innovation process, but what I do know is that ideas are common, good ideas are rare and good ideas followed with action are rarer still. A dynamic individual may have or come across what many would feel is a good idea, about 4 to 8 times per year – some people much more, some less. Ideas are always fun and exciting to me, but I confess to only following up on a few. The rest of creativity goes into tweaking current projects, or reading and learning and bringing those ideas into everyday activities.

Since there isn’t really any value in a creative or innovative idea without follow-through, there is nothing wrong and everything to gain by running with someone else’s innovative idea or improvement. You just have to keep an open mind to where it may come from.

Big ideas can come from the top down or bottom up. But incremental improvements more typically come from your everyday users or developers living with a product every day.

For instance, an ongoing challenge for us in our Globalyzer product, is that when our clients first apply it to perform static analysis on their code, they often end up with what we refer to as false positive results. That is, the product will flag internationalization errors, and in particular embedded strings, which may be programmatic elements such as debug statements or database queries. We developed rules based filters and a back end database to minimize, catch and tag them, but they typically need some adaptation and customization for each code base. That’s fine and to be expected and managed, and even a strength of the system, but what if there was another way?

And in fact a Jr. Programmer/intern working at my company doing a lot of code scanning for service projects made a simple remark, “what if we compared those strings to an actual dictionary? That would tell us quite a bit about the nature of the string just based on content, rather than programmatic rules.” It was a very good idea and one of our architects adapted it to make it real. By the time you are reading this, this improvement will have been released in our software. The young programmer is back in school and has moved on, but his good idea is about to become a real part of our product.

Innovation Devalues Everything it Touches

By its very nature, innovation puts either a person or process out of work. It wouldn’t be worth anything if it didn’t make someone more productive with less. At the same time, the first rounds of innovation are typically full of pitfalls that need to be overcome.

The immediate case that comes to mind is the current brouhaha over crowdsourcing. In case you haven’t attended LocalizationWorld,  read up on industry happenings, or participated in numerous LinkedIn discussions, Crowdsourcing is either a great evil or the most innovative thing that’s happened in our industry in a while, or something in between. There are complaints about the very concept, the devaluing of translator expertise and what some people feel is an inferior end result produced by enthusiastic, but naive, volunteers willing to work for accolades alone. Others, notably at Facebook, feel it’s a process that results in faster, cheaper translations at a higher quality. It’s not hard to find evidence supporting both sides, and I suppose at the moment final judgment on immediate results may not be the relevant criteria. More likely the industry could potentially have something to gain using the technologies for rendering translations in context with application pages, rather than the contextless traditional table view. These tools can be applied to more traditional translation resources, while also gaining a better linguistic review platform and buy-in from in-country clients and employees – who are after all, the real stakeholders and judges in a localization effort. But that’s just my understanding of it, and I may be overlooking something. Certainly there’s a long way to go, but I wouldn’t be caught on the side of belittling the persistent follow-through of dedicated people bringing ideas into reality and adding enhancements to overcome pitfalls.

BOULDER, CO – January 7, 2010 – Lingoport, a leading provider of software internationalization tools for software localization and internationalization consulting services, announced today the release of Globalyzer 3.2.

Lingoport’s software internationalization tool assists entire enterprises in preparing software development for world-market opportunities. Key-features include static analysis of source code for the measurement, reporting, and fixing of software internationalization bugs over a product’s lifecycle, across broad development teams and entire enterprises. Globalyzer supports a wide variety of programming languages and database scripts.

The key highlights of the 3.2 release include:

• Dictionary-based filtering: Compares strings found to dictionary entries, which helps further filter programmatic strings that should not be translated. This is particularly effective in isolating embedded strings for localization, while reducing the effort of user-based filter controls to avoid false positive reporting.
• Reporting Enhancement: With all the ways that one can fine tune Globalyzer detection and filtering, we expanded Globalyzer reports to include information on filtering and detection choices associated with individual results. This helps developers track and adapt which filters and detection algorithms and customizations are producing specific results during internationalization source code scans.

Adam Asnes, founder and CEO of Lingoport, notes, “We are particularly excited about dictionary filtering because it provides a very creative and effective way to get Globalyzer users strong detection results while minimizing project customization.” He adds, “This feature is particularly effective for programming languages like C and C++, but also applies well to .NET and Java.”

To register for a free Globalyzer trial, please visit: http://globalyzer.com/gi/companyRegistration.jsp

To learn more about Globalyzer, visit http://lingoport.com/globalyzer

About Lingoport

Founded in 2001, Lingoport provides extensive software localization and internationalization consulting services. Lingoport’s Globalyzer software, a market leading software internationalization tool, helps entire enterprises and development teams to effectively internationalize source code and to prepare applications for localization.

For more information, please visit http://lingoport.com or http://globalyzer.com or contact Lingoport at +1 303 444 8020 or info@lingoport.com.

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